He knew she was beautiful, but she went about her good girl business without fussing. She didn't know what was in her mother's head when she baptized her with a royal name, but she was sorry she didn't call her by a different name when her mother called out to her, "Empty, Augusto, you big boob," or "Rub, Augusto, the floor, you'll jump your eyes". Two loved her, the hatter and the shoemaker, each of them trying to please her, sometimes bringing her flowers and sugarplums, sometimes sweet talk, if only she would choose once. She went after the watchmaker because he knew how to value time.
(Translated by Carla-Marina Ștefănescu / University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, MTTLC, year II / Corrected by Silvia Petrescu, coordinator of the translations)Real Fiction is a collective project started in 2013 by Florin Piersic Jr. The concept of Real Fiction continued to exist as a Facebook group, after a volume of stories was published at Humanitas Publishing House. (In March 2022, the group has 8,050 members.) The authors write ultra-short stories, with the texts limited to 500 characters (in Romanian, so the length of the English translation might be a little different) - a flash-fiction exercise on a topic that changes every few days. The group's coordinators are Florin Piersic Jr., Gabriel Molnar, Răzvan Penescu, and Luchian Abel. (Drawing by Adrian T. Roman)
Versiunea în română a acestui text se poate citi aici, în rubrica Ficțiuni Reale. 
